Barbara C.Hansen, Ph.D. Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, College ofMedicine University of South Florida, visited Primed in Dec 6-8 2014.

Dr. Hansen is the Director of the Center for Preclinical Research, which combines the Obesity, Diabetes and Aging Research Center and the Diabetes Complications Prevention Center of the College of Medicine and Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of South Florida Tampa. Her research has addressed the physiological,cellular,and molecular defects underlying the development of obesity and diabetes mellitus and their prevention, as well as the prevention of diabetic complications. Dr. Hansen has developed non-human primate models of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and diabetic complications, and these models are applied to studies of the mechanisms of these disorders, their natural history,and their mitigation/treatment and prevention by pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical approaches. Dr. Hansen has been a leader in studies of obesity in non-human primates, and has established a large colony of spontaneous obese rhesus monkeys that are used to study the efficacy of new agents and translational medicine.

After the visit, Dr. Hansen said she will cooperate with Primed in obesity and diabetes monkey models research.